10.05.2013

Post Fontan :: Day 4 :: In the Right Direction

Today has been kind of quiet. We've spent the day watching movies and dozing in between our power struggles with taking meds and eating. For breakfast D sat in my lap and ate about 3 (minuscule) bites of sausage and a good sip of Boost. He requested pizza (they have the BEST pizza!) for lunch and sat in my lap to eat his 4 bites of that. I guess considering he hasn't eaten in the past 4 days, these little bites aren't too bad. We're happy with them. We got lots of good snuggle time while watching Cars and sitting in the recliner together. I think he napped better in that hour and a half on my lap than he has the whole time we've been here.

He's still been in a fair amount of pain today. He's complaining of his back hurting so he's spent some time on his side today. We're not sure if the back pain is from his chest, from the bed, from not pottying...really not sure. He whimpers a whines a lot, and he just looks uncomfortable. We haven't really gotten any smiles today, but I'm hoping some are coming soon.

One exciting answered prayer is that he got his catheter out today! And...within about an hour he peed without any trouble! Thank you!! I was pretty nervous about that.

The other super exciting news....we're moving to the FLOOR!! Yep! We were shocked. They told us at rounds this morning that they thought he would show more improvement being outside of ICU where we had a little more privacy, he was bothered less, and where he could go to the playroom. Woo hoo! We'll take it!

We have two main issues right now. The first is the chest tube drainage. He's still draining significantly, but it's decreasing every day. Not decreasing by much, but decreasing, which is definitely what we want to hear. They just took a sample to test it for chyle. We're REALLY hoping it comes back negative. More details on that later.

The other issue is that darn armpit issue. Last night we had to give him some good drugs to get him to relax enough to work on those armpits. We also discovered his groin area looks about like his armpits did the first day before the blisters. These spots are causing a significant amount of pain for him so we're really hoping they start healing soon. His arms are looking a lot better than they did, but they still look like this:

I can't even imagine how much this hurts. It's really sad! The only thing we can come up with is that it's from the Betadine they used to clean him before surgery. It doesn't seem to have bothered him on his chest at all. From what we can tell its where the Betadine sat in a fold...armpits, groin. We know he has a chlorhexidine allergy from the cath, but it looks like we'll be going for allergy tests once we're out of here. He has a lifetime of procedures ahead of him and we have to get this figured out.

I think that's about it for today. We're looking forward to getting upstairs and being more comfortable. Hoping to get more than 3-4 hours of sleep a night because we won't have to take shifts sleeping. And we'll get to eat together! That's so exciting!

Well, they're wanting to load the bed to head up. Gotta go!

Please pray for his skin issues and drainage!

Thank you for your prayers, friends! They are certainly being answered!!